Saturday, March 11, 2006

Mojave Snow

Suri and I had planned weeks ago to photograph and gather data to complete the final two segments of my Las Vegas to Zion road blog (www.lvtz.blogspot.com) on this particular Saturday. Unfortunately the weather has been quite uncooperative. In fact most of the Utah portion of the trip was either socked in with fog or snowing. It is fairly rare for snow this far south in March. We decided to still take the trip but shifted focus and made the most of our day by drinking and going to thrift stores.

Our first stop was the Dam Bar in Beaver Dam, Arizona where we enjoyed very tasty Bloody Marys served with an olive in a Styrofoam cup. I was thrilled that Suri loved the place because it is definitely one on my favorite joints to have a drink in. She loves to people watch and this is as good as it gets for colorful characters. The place was packed by twelve noon so we decided to head on to Mesquite after buying $5 worth of Arizona Power Ball numbers (today's jackpot is a mere 62 million dollars).The Dam Bar

In Mesquite, before loading up the car with alcohol to smuggle back into Utah, we hit the Salvation Army thrift store and scored on some very cool stuff, including a 1950's Risk game board that I've needed to complete a vintage set of this classic Parker Brothers game. The store was having some sort of sale and was practically giving the stuff away. Next stop was the Rite Aid drug store where we found more great bargains on alcohol and stocked up on Peeps and malted eggs.Blue Peeps (who knew?)

We took the back road into St. George on old Hwy. 91 (after a second trip to the Dam Bar) and made a photo stop at the Joshua tree preserve near the Arizona-Utah line. I have never seen snow on these mountains in all my 20 some years of acquaintance with these here parts. I know it snows in the Mojave but this was my very first time actually seeing it. Needless to say it was a breath taking sight to behold.Beaver Dam MountainsMojave beauty

Suri chugs a Tecate (God love her)

After dinner in St. George we stopped at the Deseret Industries store and I scored a biography of Meyer Lansky (my bedtime book....oh boy!) and Suri some cool kitchenware and tacky stationary. Lattes at the Bit & Spur and the end of a wonderful day has finally arrived. All in all not a bad Saturday, with the original mission of the blog still yet to be accomplished. Maybe we'll go in another two weeks. I'll keep ya posted.